01 | june

CHAPTER ONE

JUNE

SOFIA

          They told me about it at breakfast, on a crisp October morning.

          To be honest, they probably weren't planning on telling me anything about it, considering I'd barged into the kitchen and interrupted their conversation, but they ultimately decided it wouldn't be fair to keep me in the dark about what had happened.

          I could hear the distant mumbling of my parents as I walked down the stairs of our two-story house, stomach grumbling and dread creeping up my spine. They had never been the type of people to share hushed conversations, and, if there was a family in this town that would win the yearbook superlative of 'most likely to break the ice', it would be the Winehearts. That, along with the eerie silence of the neighborhood, quickly led me to think there was something weird going on that morning.

          They abruptly shut up once I walked inside the kitchen, my Converse sneakers gliding across the wooden floors in the hallway, and their heads jolted upright to turn to face me. They looked like kids who had just been caught red-handed, doing something they shouldn't; that was a look I'd find on my own face, not on theirs.

          "Hello," I greeted, "it is indeed I, Sofia, your favorite daughter."

          "Sofia!" my dad, Paul, replied, with excessive enthusiasm—complete with opening his arms in an invitational gesture. "It's wonderful to meet you."

          Though Paul wasn't my biological father, he might as well be. From what I'd heard from my mom, I'd gotten my Filipino heritage from her, while my biological father had given me some European roots, though she wasn't certain where from exactly. The three of us fit together snugly, the picture-perfect family the neighborhood coveted, and it felt like he'd been here forever.

          I didn't remember him not being in the picture, for that matter, and he and my mom had started dating back when she was still pregnant. He did just fine, wearing his Proud Dad t-shirt whenever he came to watch one of my volleyball matches, lending me money for gas, and pretending he knew nothing about the wine stain in our living room couch.

          "What's going on?" I asked, eyeing them both as I waited for an answer. "What were you talking about?"

          My mom, Joyce, sighed. In front of her sat a cup of coffee, which seemed to have gone cold, as there was no steam coming out of it, even though the poignant smell still lingered in the kitchen. "What do you want to eat for breakfast?"

          "I'd like a nice, hot cup of tea regarding what the hell is going on with the two of you." They shared a nervous look. "See? There you go again, making me feel like you're hiding something."

          "Sof," Paul began, rolling up the sleeves of his baby-blue shirt. "This isn't how we wanted you to find out."

          "I'm a professional gossiper; I don't care how I get my information as long as I get it." I walked up to the cupboard where we kept the coffee mugs, pulled one out and began to fill it with the brewed coffee still left in the pot. "I need to hurry up, though; June's picking me up any minute now, and we have a Biology test."

          "Oh, honey," Mom murmured, and the sadness in her tone startled me—not more than her trembling bottom lip, however. The mug wavered in my hand, and a few droplets dripped onto my tanned skin. "I'm really sorry. June's dead."


          Juniper Beaumont and I had been friends ever since I remembered. There had never been a pre-June era, and the thought of a post-June one, where she wouldn't be in my life, was absolutely unfathomable. We had always lived next door to each other and, even though we both owned cars, we rode together to save up on gas and just so we'd have an excuse to color-coordinate outfits.

          I'd started school one year later than I was supposed to, thanks to a nasty case of chicken pox when I was about to start my first year of school ever, so I feared I'd be kicked aside like a stray by the kids that were younger than me. I had tried to convince myself I could take it, that it wasn't too big of a difference—after all, my birthday was in mid-March—but the first-day jitters got to me.

          June had refused to let me face it all by myself. She stood by my side through thick and thin, and, sooner or later, I had found myself at home with her and as we slowly built our group of friends, solidifying our bonds throughout middle and high school.

          Part of me was always excited for the days when I was the designated driver because it meant I'd get to see her older brother, Meridian, right before he left to go to college, now that a pipe had burst in his dorm, and he came home. Though I was certain he saw me as nothing but his little sister's best friend and seemed to greatly enjoy rolling his eyes at us whenever the three of us were in the same room, I was stupid enough to cherish that. I knew I was pretty, pretty enough to be asked out by other guys, but Meridian Beaumont and I belonged to different worlds.

          Meridian aside, June was, undoubtedly, my rock. She always had a say behind a large portion of my decisions, had been the one to drag me to the volleyball team in the first place, and was the first person outside of my family I knew I could trust with my life.

          Until she wasn't.


          "Maybe it's best if you stay home today," Paul advised, crouching in front of me to pick up the larger shards of what once had been the porcelain mug I was holding. I didn't realize I had dropped it until I saw the dark-brown stains covering my sneakers, seeping into the fabric of my socks, and Mom had wrapped an arm around my waist. "You can take that test some other time . . ."

          I looked at her, expecting her to confess they were pulling a cruel prank on me because Juniper Beaumont couldn't be dead, but her lips were pressed together in a thin line, creating creases on her chocolate-colored lipstick. She had never been much of a jokester, gladly letting Paul occupy that role, and I knew I had to come to terms that June wouldn't barge into the house and drag me outside because we were running late.

          I couldn't tell if I was crying, but I knew I was shaking as I tried to say something—anything. Surely her parents would have told me something, maybe Meridian would have tried to contact me if it was true, perhaps the rest of our friends were all in on it too . . .

          "The Beaumonts stopped by in the middle of the night," Mom revealed, as she helped me sit on one of the tall chairs by the immaculate kitchen islands. They'd both considered me and fragile kitchen utensils a deathly combination for the time being, but they didn't think about my possibly revolving stomach, my tightly clenched hands, and the overwhelming ache in my heart. "We thought it was best to only let you know in the morning, but, in retrospective, we probably should have woken you up."

          Whatever she said next, I only caught it in small fragments. My brain tried to explain to itself she was talking about what had happened to my best friend, to my sister, but the information was scattered.

. . . in a motel room, on the outskirts of town . . .

. . . shocked, they had no idea . . .

. . . she'd told them she was with you . . .

. . . dead. June's dead . . .

. . . Meridian.

          "I have to go," I insisted, in a voice that definitely didn't sound like mine. People had spent years of my life telling me I should follow a career in law or in politics because I had a way of making people believe in what I was saying and thinking I felt confident enough. "I have . . ."

          I tried to stand up from my seat, but the floor wobbled beneath my feet, and I stumbled to the side, slamming my hip against the corner of the kitchen island. Years of being an athlete, along with my genes, had rewarded me with a lean, slender frame, and my hip bone definitely wasn't happy with the sudden trauma.

          Mom held me before I could fall, but she still allowed my legs to give out until I pathetically started sobbing in her arms. Everything came crashing down all of a sudden and all at once, and it felt like oxygen wasn't reaching my lungs in the amount it should be. I heaved, whimpered, and whined until it felt like forever, until it felt like I had no energy left in me.

          She stroked my hair and I held on to her with both hands before feeling another pair of arms wrap around me. I was pretty sure I'd stained both of their shirts with my makeup—because I had always thought I definitely didn't cry enough to invest in waterproof mascara, for example—but it felt so . . . trivial, so selfish of me to be thinking about it at that moment.

          June was dead.

          The phone rang at some point, and Paul begrudgingly stood up to go answer it. Mom never dropped me, holding me close to her chest as though the gesture, the closeness was enough to take away from the fact that my best friend was dead. Together, we found out classes were canceled for the day and an assembly will be held tomorrow to explain the situation to the student body.

          I was dreading it as soon as I heard Paul say those words. I knew our group of friends was relatively popular, whatever that meant, and people liked us, but they didn't know us. June had always been a private person, and now we had to put up with hundreds of people pretending they knew her inside and out when it was supposed to be my job. A few weeks later, they'd stop caring and move on to another trending topic.

          Sooner or later, people would forget about June, but I couldn't afford such a luxury. To me, forgetting about her would be disrespectful to her memory.

          Besides, girls like Juniper Beaumont couldn't die. It was unnatural.

          "Meridian," I whispered. "Does he know?"

          "You should go," Mom advised, sniffling. "I think . . . I think he might need someone right now."

          She helped me stand up, and none of us bothered mentioning how horrible I looked, with black splotches of mascara cascading down my cheeks and bloodshot eyes. I forced myself to power through it all—the heartache, the devastating emptiness, and the urge to deny reality—and pushed myself out of the door towards the Beaumonts' house.

          Even though I hated to admit it, everything looked perfectly normal. All the lawns were immaculate, the big houses surrounded by the typical white picket fences, and the falling leaves were quickly brushed by the gardeners. Everyone in the neighborhood was rich enough to hire their own cleaning, gardening, and housekeeping staff, with the money having been in the family for generations, but there were still a few new money houses around.

          Grace Sato, for example. She always rode her bike to school and, since everything was cancelled for the day, one would expect it to be resting outside, but it was gone. Certainly, she'd already heard the news—I was beginning to suspect everyone had received them before I did—and, if I knew her as well as I thought I did, she had left to go meet up with her girlfriend, Christina Desai. They were two people who were rarely seen apart from each other to the point one wouldn't know where one of them ended and where the other began.

          It never mattered to us. They were our friends.

          The Beaumonts' silver Mercedes-Benz E-Class was gone, but June's 2018 white Corolla was parked on the concrete driveway, and my stomach churned. I closed my hands into fists, my nails digging into the soft flesh of my palms, and I crossed the street, hyperaware of my parents' eyes glued to the back of my head. Mom probably debated whether letting me out of the house had been a good idea or not, Paul tried to come up with something comforting to say, but then they both remembered my best friend was dead.

          They were going to let this one slide, just for June.

          They had locked the door, but I had a copy of the key. June had given it to me years ago, arguing we never knew when it might come in handy, and, as I inserted it into the lock, I could only hope I was doing the right thing. When the door slid open with the push I had given it, I expected the family dog, Crouton, to come welcome me, but he didn't even lift his head from his bed when I walked past him.

          "Hi," I greeted, because my parents raised me to have proper manners and etiquette, and that includes saying hello to peoples' pets (although I drew a line at most reptiles). Crouton grumbled, and his caramel-colored ears twitched. "Where's your owner?"

          Crouton looked at me with big, sad eyes. I had a feeling that even he knew something was up, something was wrong—he knew something had changed, and June would never be the one to take him out for a walk again.

          "June's dead," I croaked out, and he whimpered. "She's dead, and you don't even get it, do you? In a month or two, it won't matter to you anymore. You'll have other people to feed you, to walk you, to bathe you. It means jack shit to you. Her parents can't afford the luxury of forgetting about her. Her brother can't." I looked away towards the spiral staircase when a floorboard creaked upstairs. I hadn't checked the garage to see if Meridian's car was in there, but my parents had been the ones to say I should come see him—meaning he could be in the house. "I don't get to have my best friend back. You"—I pointed to him—"don't get just how lucky you are to be a dog in a house full of people who love you."

          "Are you done traumatizing my dog?"

          I turned around, facing the stairs, and saw him, as pale as a ghost against the dark wood. His dark-blond hair, the exact same shade as June's, sprung up as though he hadn't tried to tame it in weeks, and the circles beneath his eyes were darker than I had ever seen them—and I had witnessed plenty of his all-nighters before. In fact, I had joined him for some of them.

          All I wanted to do was cross the distance between us and throw my arms around his neck. I knew Meridian just as well as I had known June and, even though they weren't generally similar (Meridian was about as warm and welcoming as a blizzard), there were still some similarities, so I knew he needed someone. At the same time, he was still Meridian freaking Beaumont, and I didn't want to impose my presence when he needed time to mourn his sister.

          "Mer," I whispered, taking a hesitant step towards him, and his jaw throbbed in the same way it did right before he started yelling at someone. For a split second, I feared he would kick me out, not just over the dog, but I kept making my way towards him. Though he did open his mouth, all that rose from his throat was a sob, and his blue eyes—June's blue eyes—filled with tears for the first time in eighteen years.

          He shortened the distance between us, and his arms quickly circled my body, with a hand cradling my head as if I were a small child—as if I were the little sister he had just lost. We were both hurting, without there being a chance, no matter how small it was, to get back what had been taken from us.

          It was such a selfish thought, wasn't it? June was dead and there was no way we could bring her back to life, no way she'd fulfill her dreams or smile again, and all I cared about was how it made me feel.

          "You're freezing," I told him, dropping my arms, and my fingertips brushed against the skin of his wrists and hands. There was light stubble growing along the sharp lines of his jaw, but he still smelled like shampoo; he had taken the time to shower, but not to shave, and I didn't know what to make of it. Maybe he had gotten something on his skin, something he desperately wanted to scrub away . . . "Come on."

          "Why are you here?" he questioned, not moving an inch, not even when I tried to drag him upstairs. I wasn't good at comforting people, and my action repertoire for those situations mostly included awkward pats on the back, and I wished I knew what to do. I couldn't bring June back, but I could try to keep him minimally sane. "Don't you have school?"

          "No. Classes got canceled."

          He huffed, and one of his hands flew up to his hair. He towered over me quite easily, standing at, at least, six feet. "That's the stupidest thing I've heard today and trust me, I've heard a lot of crap during the past few hours."

          "You haven't gone to class either."

          He quirked an eyebrow. "Fair enough. You still haven't answered my question."

          "I . . ." I took a deep breath. I knew I had to choose my words carefully; any missteps would send him off the edge, dropping him into the anger stage, and I had never been one to know how to handle angry people. I also knew Meridian wouldn't hurt a fly, but he was definitely far from the right state of mind. "I wanted to check on you. I didn't . . . I didn't want you to feel like you were going through this alone."

          Meridian stayed quiet for a while before eventually turning around and walking up the stairs. I waited until he had a decent head start over me, just so he wouldn't feel too overwhelmed by me wandering around the house as if it were just a regular day, but I still followed him upstairs and into his bedroom.

          It felt like I was invading his personal space, so I left the door open. When he lived in the dorms, this bedroom was always tidy, without a single speckle of dust on a shelf, but now that he was here—and probably hadn't slept in over a day—it looked like a tame hurricane had paid him a visit. I realized, with a sharp pang through my heart, that June was always the one to give him hell for not keeping things organized.

          On his desk, there was a framed photo of him and June, back on his graduation day. He had an arm looped around her shoulders and both of them flashed wide grins to the camera, teeth so white they were almost blinding. When he caught me staring at it, he crossed the room in quick steps and tilted it forward until the glass was against the surface of the desk.

          I knew both of us were thinking the same thing. She would never graduate from high school. She would never go to college.

          "Meridian," I began, but he cut me off before I could say anything else.

          "She called me."

          "What?"

          "Last night." He kept his back turned to me, suddenly too interested in running a finger across the spines of some books. "She called me. I didn't pick up. Instead, I texted her asking her to leave me alone because I had to study. Now, she's dead."

hi i don't know how to write first person anymore lol

since wailing went to my "not gonna finish posting this" folder (rip), i thought i still had it. i don't. HOWEVER i'm now relatively decent at writing past tense!

(seriously. i was writing chapter 11 of CIH and i can't write in present tense anymore)

anyway, please let me know what you think! next chapter is meridian's, with some hint of my bb grace, but i still have half of my finals to go. i also want to finish that CIH chapter, write tone spirit and not die etc

(ps sofia is 18 but i had to edit some parts of it bc it was a last-minute idea; if anything doesn't make sense or says she's 17 let me know so i can fix it)

dedicated to my wife bc i love her concussive

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